Meta Paintings

Metapaintings are paintings about “painting”. They are often playful, enigmatic and walk a middle-ground between subject and object, realism and illusion, surface and depth, signifier and signified. I see them as philosophical cartoons about “Art”. I often have a clear image of a Metapainting in my mind before I paint it. In some paintings I have included the artist’s hands or a paint brush to explore the ambiguity of “painting” as both object and active verb.

These tend to have a more tentative, unfinished, exploratory feel that I like. They are obviously speculative. They often have a “subjective view” so that the viewer fits right into the painting like putting on a pair of gloves. Metapaintings deal with ideas about Art, Art Therapy, and the subjective life of the artist.

-Michael de Gruchy Haslam